


When You're Lost

by moonlighten



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Vaguely Medieval setting, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29925279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlighten/pseuds/moonlighten
Summary: Sir Howell's noble quest to slay an evil witch does not go as smoothly as he'd anticipated.
Relationships: Chivalrous Male Knight/Male Witch Who Is Feared But Actually Good, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fair_Feather_Friend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fair_Feather_Friend/gifts).



> As I mentioned in a comment, Fair_Feather_Friend, I had intended on writing you this fic as a gift for Chocolate Box. Unfortunately, I only managed to get the outline finished before the deadline, and was not able to post it as a treat in the exchange.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> (Also, posting as a WiP as I'm still not quite up to full writing capacity again yet...) 
> 
> (Also, also took the opportunity to swap out the (questionable) fantasy place names I'd come up with and set this in the same general setting as _For the Crown_ , _Flowers but Fading Seen_ , et al.)

* * *

The thatched cottage resembles an illustration from a children's book of fairy stories – perhaps the temporary refuge of a princess fleeing from the cruelties of a wicked stepmother, or home to talking bears of varying sizes.

Its door and window frames are painted a cheery shade of sunshine yellow which perfectly matches the roses that climb the white plaster walls, and pillowy clouds of clean smelling woodsmoke curl out of its squat stone chimney. It looks snug, homely, and treacherously inviting.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Howell asks his guide.

"Aye, sir," the man says, with a firm nod of his head.

"This is Dark Fell Forest?" Howell asks, casting a dubious eye about his surroundings, which are neither 'dark', nor 'fell', nor even what he'd term a 'forest'. 

'Forest', to Howell's mind, suggests a shadowy, impenetrable vastness in which a person might get turned around and wander lost for days without ever catching a glimpse of another living soul. It suggests towering pines and dense, tangled undergrowth concealing all manner of fearsome creatures waiting their chance to pounce on the unwary.

It certainly does not invoke a stand of no more than a score of sturdy oak trees with wide-spreading branches, or bright, fresh air ripe with the melodic sound of birdsong and the distant chuckle of a fast-flowing brook.

"It is, sir," his guide replies, nonetheless.

"And I will find the witch you spoke of here?"

"The _evil_ witch," the man, imbuing the epithet with a great deal of portentous gravity. "With a heart of the darkest coal."

Howell looks again on the neat little cottage with its colourful garden and smart picket fence. It is far from his imaginings of the lair of the monster he seeks and, not for the first time since he set out on his long, frustrating journey from Cataractonium, his resolve falters and he feels very unsure of himself.

As he always does in moments like this, he reaches for the reassuring weight of the sword sheathed at his hip and curls his hand around the cool smoothness of its jewelled pommel. A sense of rightness flows through him, steady and grounding. 

_Yes, this is the right place_.

"Thank you, good sir," he says to his guide, "for showing me the way here."

"It was my pleasure, sir," the man says. "The witch has been a blight on these lands for an age, and I, for one, will be glad to be shot of him."

Not pleasure enough to forgo recompense, however. The man holds out a hand, palm expectantly flat; Howell drops a shilling into it.

The man squints first at the coin and then up at Howell, his brow bristling in resentment. "The journey was long, sir," he says, "and I've worked up a powerful thirst."

He gives a raspy cough as though in demonstration and lifts his hand a little higher. It doesn't lower again until Howell has furnished him with half a guinea's worth of shillings – sufficient that he could buy beer enough to drown in never mind slake his thirst, no matter how powerful.

"Go now," Howell says with – though it shames him – rather more irritation than concern. "Go back to town. It will not be safe for you to remain here."

His erstwhile guide thanks him again and then trots eagerly away, presumably headed towards the nearest pub. Howell watches him until he reaches a bend in the road that hides him from view and then, with stout heart and a stride strong and true, he approaches the incongruous den of the beast. 

When he sets a hand to it, the cottage's gate swings open with a creak that is more rusty than ominous, startling into flight a plump-breasted robin that had been perched dozing on a nearby fencepost. It chirps indignantly and flutters away to settle atop the roof, where it watches Howell with a beady weather eye.

The garden beyond the gate is even more florally bounteous than it had appeared from afar, so awash with lushly blossoming plants, densely packed, that the path that wends its way amongst them is almost hidden from view. Howell picks his way along it delicately, past sunflowers nodding their bright, heavy heads, blushing pink stocks and spindly daisies, brushing aside their trailing leaves and delicate stems with a gentle hand, careful not to break them, until he reaches the front door of the cottage.

Two gurning clay homunculi painted in lurid shades of blue and red stand sentinel either side of it, and in its centre, a brass door knocker shaped like a bumblebee is mounted, its plump abdomen tarnished dark by the weather and heavy use.

Clearly, the witch has many visitors, many collaborators in his nefarious business, but as Howell is not one of them, he does not rap politely at the door. He draws his sword, and it sings in his hand, triumphant. The feeling that surges hot in his breast now in response to that glorious sound is not just rightness but _righteousness_. 

It swells his voice with powerful clarity when he calls out, "Witch! _Maleficus_! Come out and face me!"

A tense moment of silence and stillness follows, broken only by the irate chirruping of the robin and then a twitching of the chintzy curtains at one of the cottage's windows. Muffled footsteps sound within soon afterwards, and when they stop, the door is flung open with a ferocious swiftness. A tall man with dark, tousled hair steps through it to glower at Howell with piercing blue eyes.

"Who are you?" he asks in a thunderously deep voice. "What are you doing here?"

"My name is Sir Howell Armitage," Howell says, meeting the witch's gaze boldly; without fear. "Knight of the Earl of Cataractonium. I have come to end your reign of terror!"

"My reign of terror," the witch repeats blankly. 

"Yes! By ridding the world of your evil, I will—"

"My evil?" A thread of something which sounds disconcertingly like amusement winds through the witch's words now. "Who told you I was evil, Sir Howell?"

"It was…" Howell falters again, a little of his newfound righteousness seeping away. He tightens his grip on his sword, anchoring himself before it drains from him completely. "It is talked about amongst the townspeople. One of them even accompanied me here, despite his natural and just fear of you, he was that determined you should face the justice you're long overdue!"

"Oh?" The witch arches an eyebrow. "And what was this man's name?"

"I do not recall it," Howell says, though in truth he'd never asked. He should have – would have, in better days – but his quest has become so all-consuming of late that many things have been devoured by it, common courtesy sadly very much included. "Though I do know he works as a wheelwright in Hortonium and has often been brought low by your maleficence!"

"Geoffrey Ward?" The witch scoffs. "Yes, I suppose he might call me evil. He nurses many grievances against me, most of them imagined. I'm afraid he's misled you, Sir Knight."

The witch takes a step closer to Howell, his hands held out open in front of him, empty of any weapon. He's not muttering an incantation and his fingers are motionless, not drawing patterns in the air as the Earl's Battle Mages do when they cast their spells.

No matter what wickedness the witch may have wrought, he stands before Howell now unarmed and defenceless. He cannot strike him. 

_No_ , a voice intones inside Howell's head when he lowers his arm, high-pitched and grating like steel being scraped against stone. _Strike him down! I command it!_

The words reverberate against the inside of Howell's skull and pound at his temples. He grits his teeth against the familiar pain of them, and grinds out, "I will not."

The voice screams in incoherent fury, so violently that Howell has to strain his ears to hear the witch when he says, "Your sword is glowing, Sir Howell."

"It does that sometimes," Howell says without thinking. He can't think, not with this alien consciousness raging where his own mind should be. "For the past year or so."

It had started on the eve of his twenty-ninth birthday, and Howell had thought it marvellous at first; believed it to be a blessing from the gods that he, the third son of a minor lord, had in his possession, quite by accident, a magic sword like one of the Brittonic heroes of ancient myth. 

A month later, the sword began whispering to him in his sleep. Then, it talked to him by day, becoming more and more insistent, louder and louder, until Howell could not bear it anymore and tried to destroy it.

But it did not melt when thrust deep into a blacksmith's forge, nor did it break under a hammer. In desperation, Howell cast it out into a lake and watched it sink beneath the dark waters, but when he returned home, it was laying waiting on the writing desk in his bedchambers, dry as a bone and furious about its mistreatment at his hands.

The only way to quiet it, he discovered, was to do its bidding. To try and find the _great evil that rises in the west_ , that it was so adamant that he must vanquish.

The great evil that is, apparently, standing in front of Howell now, still unarmed, still defenceless. And Howell is still a knight. In his heart, at least; his sudden disappearance six months ago might well have given the Earl cause to reconsider his title and position. 

He _cannot_ attack, even when the witch moves forward again, stepping near close enough to touch.

"How curious," the witch says. "May I take a closer look at it?"

Howell shakes his head, but the witch reaches out towards him anyway. He doesn't try and grasp hold of the sword, though; instead, he presses the tips of two fingers against the back of Howell's wrist. The sword's light and its voice are snuffed out in an instant.

"What did you do?" Howell asks. "Did you break it?"

He feels a flash of abashed pleasure at the thought.

"No," the witch says. "Just severed the connection between the two of you for the moment."

He looks different, now he's not bathed in the sword's unearthly glow. He's much closer in age to Howell than he'd assumed, somehow smaller, and definitely more tired. There are deep bags beneath his eyes, several days' worth of stubble darkening his jaw, and his eyes, though no less striking in hue, are deeply bloodshot. 

His brown roughspun robe is tattered about the hem and the stains on its overlong sleeves were not made by blood as Howell had initially taken them to be. They're too dark for that. Also, too blue, and thus most likely ink.

"It really is a curious thing, that sword," the witch continues. "Solid steel, as far as I can tell, but clearly enchanted, all the same. That shouldn't be possible. I'd like to take a closer look at it, if I may." 

Passing off the burden of the sword to another is something that Howell has often, though guiltily, entertained, but it would not, should not ever be to _this_ man.

"The sword does not leave my side," he says.

"Of course not," the witch agrees readily. "And I have no intention of taking it from you. I was inviting you into my home." He gestures welcomingly towards the cottage at his back. "You're looking awfully pale, Sir Howell. I think a nice cup of tea and a sit down would do you the world of good."

A cup of tea and a sit down sound more than nice; Howell's ears are ringing as they always do after the sword's wound itself up into one of its rages, his eyes blurred, and his legs trembling fit to spill him onto his arse if he stays standing for even a minute longer. They sound essential.

And the witch's expression appears guileless, his small smile soft and kind. His bony wrists suggest a scrawny frame lies beneath his deceptively voluminous robes – if he does try and spring an attack once he's got Howell contained in close quarters, Howell could easily overpower him physically, and he's been trained to detect and deflect all but the most powerful of magic. If he keeps his wits about him, he should have nothing to fear.

"I think they would, too," Howell says. "I'll take you up on that invitation and gladly, Sir Witch."


	2. Chapter 2

Beyond the cottage's cheery front door lies a large, airy room, with a high, beamed ceiling overhead and polished floorboards underfoot. A rocking chair and two tall-backed armchairs are arranged in a rough semicircle in front of the stone mantled fireplace, lying cold now at the height of summer. Beneath one fussily curtained window sits a low bookcase, beneath the other, a small dining table upon which a crumb-speckled plate and empty mug are set.

"You disturbed me at my breakfast," the witch offers by way of explanation as he scoops up the dirty crockery.

"But it's almost noon," Howell says, with no small measure of incredulity, and also a soupçon of envy. 

Since his days as a squire, he had been expected to rise at dawn to be about his duties and training. The sword prefers he arise even earlier, so that not one minute of daylight be given over to anything other than his quest. Four hours of sleep, it insists, are more than adequate to his needs; any longer would be tantamount to decadence – a luxury he can ill-afford.

"So it is," the witch says, smiling thinly. "How astute of you, Sir Knight. Now, if you'd like to have a seat, I'll make you that tea."

The witch bustles away to the kitchen then, leaving Howell free to ignore his suggestion and instead use the opportunity to take better stock of the room and search it for signs of devilry. 

The paintings hung on the whitewashed walls catch his eye first, though only because they are so ugly – portraying woodland creatures depicted by someone with an inept hand and an even worse eye for proportions. The rag rug spread before the fire is just as incompetently made – lumpy and misshapen – but there are no strange sigils woven into its garishly coloured strands as far as Howell is able to ascertain, nor concealed beneath it.

The bookcase's shelves contain only dry, historical tomes that Howell recognises from having been forced to endure reading them as a child, but there is something far more interesting hidden beneath it, a dark shape crouched in the shadows there, with wide, unblinking eyes that seem to shine with an otherworldly kind of malevolence.

When Howell crouches down to investigate that something more closely, it launches itself across the room and up onto the table, where it lands to the accompaniment of an ear-splitting yowl and the panicked skittering of claws across the pitted wood, the dark fur of its tail bristling like a bottle brush.

"Your familiar?" Howell asks the witch when he returns from the kitchen with a laden tea tray.

"No, just a cat," the witch says. "One of several I own. All of whom know they're not allowed on the table. Shoo, Tibert."

He nudges the cat gently with his elbow until it leaps back to the floor again. It gives Howell one last offended, incandescent glare before stalking away to parts unknown.

"Now, stop scaring my pets and sit yourself down, Sir Howell," the witch says as he unloads the contents of his tray. "Before this tea gets cold."

He fills two earthenware mugs from a matching teapot and slides one across the table to Howell when he takes a seat as directed.

"Thank you, Witch," Howell says.

"Bastien," the witch says. "If you're going to be my guest, I'd like us to be on first name terms, at least."

That does only seem polite. Howell nods acceptance and corrects himself: "Thank you, Bastien."

He raises his mug, inhales deep of the fragrant steam rising from it, but before he can take a sip, a prickle of unease shivers down his smile.

 _Don't drink it_. The voice is thready and distant, scarcely more than a sighed breath of a sound at the back of Howell's mind. _He can't be trusted_.

How easily Howell might have been tricked into partaking of his own doom by a cunning performance of affable hospitality on the witch's part, if not for the sword's timely interference, protecting him from his own rash stupidity. Though the witch may balk at matching magic against steel, as he had proven out in the garden, he may have no such compunctions against using subtler methods to rid himself of those who oppose him. 

After all, Howell only has Bastien's word that he is not the evil the people of Hortonium name him.

He wets his lips with the tea but doesn't swallow a drop of it. "Delicious," he says, feigning a smile of contentment.

"I'm glad you think so," Bastien says. He drinks deep from his own mug, but that signifies nothing. He might have taken the antidote to any poison it contains beforehand, or else built up an immunity to its effects by taking tiny doses of it over the course of many months, as Howell has read is the habit of assassins. "Now, Sir Howell, what caused you to come looking for me? I can't imagine anyone in Cataractonium has ever even heard of me."

"I wasn't looking for you in particular," Howell says. "I'm on a knightly quest to bring an end to the great evil I was told had arisen in the west. My inquiries led me to your door."

"You think I'm this 'great evil'?" Bastien looks nonplussed. "Did Geoffrey Ward call me that?"

'Conniving bastard' and 'treacherous snake' were Ward's exact words, but Howell had considered them close enough, and the sword clearly agreed. 

"Something like," he says.

"Shall I tell you what 'great evil' I've perpetrated against Geoffrey Ward? One" – Bastien marks the point by raising his index finger – "he claims that I cheated him by selling him a curative potion that didn't work, though I know for a fact that he didn't apply it to his rash every day like I directed him to. Two" – his middle finger joins the index – "he blames me for his wife leaving him; insists it was due to some curse I laid on him because of our argument over payment for that potion, and nothing whatsoever to do with his repellent personality or dubious personal hygiene.

"And lastly" – he adds his thumb – "and most egregiously to his mind, I'm sure – my father was Gallian. The old enemy. He's never trusted me, Sir Howell, and never will, no matter what I might or might not do."

"He's not the only one in town that doesn't trust you," Howell says. 

Bastien sighs heavily. "Because I'm a witch, no doubt, and they believe the tales that we consort with demons and other such nonsense. They're all lies, Sir Howell. We're not all that different from mages, really; we use the same magic, just in slightly different ways. More herblore and communing with spirits, and less chanting and fireballs."

"Communing with spirits?" The implication makes Howell shiver again. "Do you mean the dead?"

"I mean genii locorum and petty gods," Bastien says. "Necromancy is the reserve of mages, but does anyone respect them any the less for it? Do they ward themselves against the evil eye when a mage passes them in the street on market day? No, the king makes cadres of mages to serve him at court and fight battles in his name, and they get hailed as heroes for it!"

Bastien scowls at Howell, as though he is solely to blame for this grave injustice. Howell has no answer for any of it, though, and can only shrug and venture, "I'm sorry?"

He's subjected to a baleful glare for a moment longer, but then Bastien laughs and says, "And I'm sorry for getting distracted from our conversation and letting my mouth run away from me." He leans back in his chair, his gaze turning from accusatory to speculative. "I'm guessing it was the sword which first warned you of this supposed evil, wasn't it? I could sense it talking to you; not the words, as such, but the shape of them. I could feel how much it hates me."

"It was," Howell admits – there seems little point in denying it when the sword had given itself away in such a fashion.

"And you're willing to take it at its word?" Bastien asks, shaking his head in disbelief. "Do you know who made it? Where it came from?"

"I won it in a tourney," Howell says. "I understand it came from the Earl's own armoury. As for the rest? I know nothing of it."

"And no more does the Earl, I imagine. He likely didn’t think it anything other than a finely crafted blade. There are no runes on it that I can see, and nothing else that might betray its nature. As I told you before, nothing born of iron can hold magic. That sword is an impossible creation, Sir Howell, and it's telling you impossible things. I've never knowingly done evil to anyone, and I'm not planning to do so in the future, either.

"I'm just a… Well, I hesitate to say simple – I've studied my art for far too many years to claim that – but just a hedge witch, all the same. I have nothing to hide." He stands up from his seat and beckons for Howell to follow him. "Come, I'll show you around and you can see for yourself."

He leads Howell to the kitchen, where he opens the stove and the door of each cupboard – "No butchered body parts stored within, as you can see." – and thence to the large bedroom adjoining it – "And no sacrificial victims chained up in the wardrobes" – and thereafter the smaller bedroom behind that – "Nor any hidden under the beds".

The last room he shows Howell contains a worktable which is home to an alembic, pestle and mortar, and other tools of an apothecary's trade that Howell cannot name, with huge pots of dried herbs and berries set beside it. On the opposite wall stands a desk strewn about with sheets of paper covered in scrawled annotations and scruffy sketches of plants, not a one of them helpfully entitled 'My Plans to Conquer Northern Britannia' or 'How I'll Get My Revenge on the Ungrateful Sods of Hortonium'. To Howell's untrained eye, they look like notes on herblore.

"And this is my laboratory," Bastien says, gesturing about the room. "Where I make remedies to aid those who don't think I'm trying to poison them. Which, I hasten to add, I am not. Do you need to see my privy too, Sir Howell, or will this suffice?"

"I think I've seen everything I need to," says Howell, who has every intention of checking the privy unaccompanied once he leaves the cottage, just in case.

"As you've seen, there's nothing nefarious going on here," Bastien says. "Either your sword is mistaken that I'm the source of this 'evil' it believes is afoot, or else it has its own reasons for trying to get you to kill me. Perhaps, _it's_ the evil one here, goading you to attack an innocent. Who knows how weapons that shouldn't exist think?" He pauses, looking thoughtful. "I might be able to find out, though. If you were to leave the sword with me—"

"I won't," Howell says. No matter how much he might like to understand the inner workings of the sword himself, it seems as though it would be a pointless exercise, even if Bastien's intentions are as pure as he claims and he only wants to study the sword for studying's sake. It would doubtless spirit itself from his keeping and back to Howell's side in short order, just as it did after he chucked it into that lake.

"Well, then I think we're done here, Sir Howell," Bastien says. "I'll show you to the door."

The sword remains silent as Howell inspects the witch's privy and finds nothing out of the ordinary there, but pipes up again once he steps foot on the road that would lead him back to Hortonium if he was free to make his own choices in such matters.

 _He is lying to you_ , it whispers, like silk sliding against the edge of a whetted blade. _Deceiving you. You should remain here, hidden, and watch him from afar. He will behave quite differently, I assure you, if he thinks he is useen._


End file.
